Taking the long way home

“I was always playing guitar,” Johnson said. “I just didn't have my mask on as a musician. I worked and worked and worked on guitar. I just didn't have 'it' yet to be out presenting myself in public.”

That changed in 2008, when Johnson — a 34-year-old college graduate working semi-enthusiastically “in business”

at the time — met David “Honeyboy” Edwards (1915-2011), a bluesman originally from Shaw, Miss., in San Francisco.

“I had a chance to talk with him,” said Johnson, who was born in San Francisco. “I hadn't pushed the music conversation. 'Honeyboy' made it a simple choice. He said, 'Play the blues.' When 'Honeyboy' says that, you listen.

“I walked out not questioning if I should do it. I knew: 'I gotta play the blues.' ”

Done. For five years, Johnson — and his Delta-derived slide-guitar riffing — has led the Mississippi Ramblers, a trio inspired by Edwards and Robert Johnson (1911-38), a pioneering 20th-century contemporary from Hazlehurst, Miss. The Sacramento group plays tonight at Tracy's Lincoln Park.

“On YouTube, (comedian) Jim Carrey says, 'Don't do things for fear. Do them out of love,' ” said Johnson, a University of California, Davis, graduate. “In business, I had this feeling a lot. Ultimately, if I had just 10 minutes left to get to the next dimension, I'd do a song. If I didn't do it, I'd know — even as a kid I had that sense — that I'd failed.”

Johnson, who grew up in San Mateo infatuated with popular music, avoided that dire eventuality seven years ago in a San Francisco coffee house. He started by doing solo shows and joining in with other acoustic players.

“Communication is the best thing,” he said. “Just getting out. After a couple of years, I started the band thing. It kinda took me a while, but it's gone very well.”

“Slide Avenue,” his second CD, was released this month. He has three more albums, one of them a live recording — all granular, organic and spontaneous: “no cut-and-paste jobs” — planned.

“I've got a little catching up to do,” said the ex-businessman, 43, who preferred being non-specific about those pre-music endeavors. “Ultimately, at the end of the day, you make the most on it by doing it yourself.”

Joe Craven, a bluegrass multi-instrumentalist known for his “found sound” improvisations, contributes to the “New Orleans feel” of “Rollin' on the River.” Johnson called “She Looks Good” a “go-for-it” bluegrass song.

The 10-track CD ranges back to Robert Johnson touchstones (“Terraplane Blues,” from 1936) and includes original material — all distinguished by Dennis Johnson's 1961 Martin New Yorker acoustic guitar and early-'60s vintage 12-string Dobro.

Johnson, born into a family of seven, wasn't weaned on Mississippi Delta and country blues and slide guitar.

His father, Joseph, a businessman. “loved” '50s R&B “stuff” and still seemed enthralled by having seen rock 'n' roll pioneer Chuck Berry perform in 1957 at San Francisco's Fillmore Auditorium: “Whatever energy was in the music, he understood very well.”

Sharon, a full-time mom, helped Dennis purchase his first guitar (a Fender Stratocaster), but he kept his finger-picking obsession mostly private at San Mateo's Aragon High School.

Oddly, his live-music indoctrination occurred during a Sammy (“The Red Rocker”) Hagar show at San Francisco's Cow Palace.

“The impact was so huge,” he said of the Salinas-born singer, guitarist and wild man (“I Can't Drive 55”). “I thought the interaction between the band and audience was amazing. The energy blew my mind.”

The playing of Craven, who's based in Dixon, Oakland-born Norton Buffalo (1951-2009) and Roy Rogers, a Redding slide-guitar master — “his sound was so deep” — led him to Robert Johnson. He tried learning by imitation.

“I just felt a connection to the Delta blues,” Johnson said. “Robert Johnson was such a huge influence. I was just allured to that music. Robert Johnson opened up the whole forest. I'd never heard anybody play that kind of guitar. Ever.”

Though Johnson studied music at UC Davis — “other courses were distracting to my purpose in life. Being a musician” — he “didn't view myself as a professional musician.”

After graduating, he had to take care of business by paying off his student loans. It took awhile to summon up the nerve to play guitar in public.

Joy Viray helped motivate him. Their relationship coincided with the formation of his band. Johnson, Sacramento drummer Tim Metz and San Mateo bassist Jane Thompson have been a unit for three years.

A professional DNA analyst, Viray now supports the business side of his brain — booking shows and attending to other logistical details.

“There's absolutely no way I could have done this without her support,” he said. “She's unbelievable. She believes in it and is 100 percent behind it.”

His childhood instincts hadn't waned, either.

“Part of me knew it was what I was supposed to do,” Johnson said of his delayed career in music. “ 'Dennis, if you don't do it and walk away from the money, you'll mask that as a scar.' I never was really into it.”

Contact Tony Sauro at (209) 546-8267 or tsauro@recordnet.com. Follow him on Twitter @tsaurorecord.